South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem says Donald Trump needs to pick someone who “tells him the truth” as his 2024 running mate—someone just like her.
Noem made the remarks in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, telling a reporter that Trump should seek out a vice presidential candidate “who tells him the truth. Honestly, the people that are my closest advisers… tell me stuff I don’t want to hear sometimes. You know, I need to be teachable. As a leader, you need to learn and listen to your advisers and make a decision and then you take action on it.”
“He needs people around him that are advising him that will tell him the truth and have America’s best interests at heart,” she said. Asked if she had the qualities listed, she said: “Oh, yeah. But I can think of a lot of people that have those qualities. But yeah, I’ve been very honest with the president ever since I’ve known him. We have a great relationship.”
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Noem’s pitch is perhaps not the best for a man who’s become notorious for ignoring his advisers and has relentlessly bullied his former VP Mike Pence for refusing to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. After Trump lost that election, the floodgates opened of former officials and aides speaking out about how he routinely rebuffed their advice, most notably during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when one former adviser noted to The Washington Post that telling him he’d lost was like “pissing into the wind.”
Noem has already been floated as one of many possible candidates for Trump’s VP pick, along with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and even right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson.
Earlier this week, Noem pooh-poohed the idea of Haley as vice president, telling Newsmax it would be a “mistake” for Trump to choose her.
